The Victor Wooten Trio The Ardmore Music Hall Ardmore PA March 4, 2017 Bass innovator Victor Wooten may not quite be a household name, but he's pretty well known as instrumentalists go. This is attributable to his talents, yes, but also to the many different types of projects in which his talents have been presented over the years. From the unique crossover spacegrass / jazz / jam band appeal of Bela Fleck ...

Victor Wooten & Carter Beauford Making Music Hudson Music 2002 One of my favorite VHS tapes in High School around 14 years ago was the Hudson Music recording called Making Music, featuring Carter Beauford and Victor Wooten. This recording is still available from Hudson Music and, as of 2002, the film contains over 90 minutes of bonus footage. When Carter Beauford was two, he started playing drums. He was so young that when ...

Victor Wooten BandCervantes Masterpiece BallroomDenverJuly 14, 2012How low can you go? You can't go any lower than the Victor Wooten Band. The band is deep, it's low, it's almost all bottom. This is a band where five members play bass. That is to say, five bass players. In one band. They didn't all play at the same time. Saturday night, the most bassists we heard at one time were only four. That is to say, ...

Bassist Victor Wooten's book The Music Lesson is a tour de force, a bold and courageous exploration of how to shift one's consciousness and engage the world from a nonordinary perspective. This is not your usual jazz autobiography, but then Wooten is not your usual musician: the ...

There are those who believe jazz is the devil's music. However, many artists have used this music to express their spirituality and reverence for God. Bassist Victor Wooten is among those, presenting that side of himself with Palmystery. Wooten is a husband and father of four, as well as the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers. The group performed on the West Coast, opening for such acts as Curtis Mayfield and War. Wooten's influences on the bass include ...

In his acclaimed bass camps, Vic Wooten counsels his students that the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves. Greg Howe doesn’t seem to have taken that lesson to heart, considering the number of notes per second on this release. Extraction is just about evenly divided between well-crafted, thoughtful compositions and dead-end chops demonstrations. Whether the ratio is worthwhile is up to the individual listener.

The pedigrees of these musicians are unquestionably solid. Right off the ...

Mike Varney wanted a powerhouse release to inaugurate his “Tone Center” fusion offshoot of Shrapnel Records. He of course thought of some of the very best artists to pull together for this project. I need not go into detail over each artist’s abilities. One or two words says it all -- awesome monsters. For those of you who don’t know, Scott Henderson gets around. With his fine self-formed band Tribal Tech he has released a string of awesome fusion and ...

Perhaps a more spontaneous super-trio gathering of the post-70s fusion generation, Vital Tech Tones finds guitarist Scott Henderson chasing the voodoo down with mercurial bassist Victor Wooten (known for his scintillating slap-style as a member of Bela Fleck's Flecktones), and veteran jazz / stadium rocker, Steve Smith. The trio has assembled a wide ranging, often blues-based arrangement of group compositions / jams, and it proves an engaging showcase for Henderson's extreme talent, both in terms of solos and rhythm work. ...

Jazz and the blues--because together this musical brother and sister speak from our nation's days of the current cultural affairs and the authenticity and truth of a place where the rhythms held the pulse and the drums the heartbeat, representing every step closer the meat on the bone

Jazz and the blues--because together this musical brother and sister speak from our nation's days of the current cultural affairs and the authenticity and truth of a place where the rhythms held the pulse and the drums the heartbeat, representing every step closer the meat on the bone. Feet in the dirt, or barefoot on a stage with sequins--it's soul beats in my chest.
I was first exposed to jazz while others listened to surf music in the '50s and '60s, it was Monk, Miles, Satchmo and Ella, Rosemary Clooney and Julie London followed. Margaret Whiting, Les McCann, Willie Bobo, Andy Simpkins, Snooky Young, Bill Basie and Helen Humes. The first time I heard Topsy, Take 2, I about passed out at the age of ten.
I've hung with Les McCann who more than 30 years after our first meeting became my duet partner on my CD, Don't Go To Strangers. Karen Hernandez from the start, Jack Le Compte on drums, Lou Shoch on bass, Steve Rawlins as my arranger and pianist, Grant Geissman - guitar genius, Nolan Shaheed, Richard Simon, and more. The big boys. My Red Hot Papas. The best show I ever attended was...
I met Helen Humes first back in 1981 and helped turn one Playboy Jazz Festival night into her tribute, bring the Basie Band to stage, her joy boys. Before she took the stage for the last time to sing, If I could Be With You One Hour Tonight thousands of copies of the newspaper I wrote for carried her story. It was kismet, her being held by Joe Williams backstage. Soon in my life were the great Linda Hopkins who told me I sang the song she wrote better than her, which floored me of course, the energizing Barbara Morrison and the stellar Marilyn Maye who guided me professionally.
My advice to new listeners... let your backbone slip and feel your body stripping back the barriers that prevent us from being one with the music.
Remember none of us are strangers, we just haven't met yet.